You may well have missed a startling statement by the Archbishop of Canterbury in his big Easter sermon this morning. Talking about people’s love of conspiracy theories, he said:
We are instantly fascinated by the suggestion of conspiracies and cover-ups; this has become so much the stuff of our imagination these days that it is only natural, it seems, to expect it when we turn to ancient texts, especially biblical texts. We treat them as if they were unconvincing press releases from some official source, whose intention is to conceal the real story; and that real story waits for the intrepid investigator to uncover it and share it with the waiting world.
This is an indication of how low people’s opinion now is of government communication. Not only that it is ‘unconvincing’ and (if I might paraphrase) deceitful, but that government isn’t even capable of sustaining the deceit.
Such an intriguing – and, frankly, depressing – choice of simile, on so many levels.